When the news broke about a final Pink Floyd record, many fans were skeptical. As a life-long fan, I had a different perspective. I think of the band's history in five separate eras: the Barrett era (The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, early singles), post-Barrett era (A Saucerful of Secrets, More, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds), mid 70s era (The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals), the Waters era (The Wall, The Final Cut), and the Gilmour era (A Momentary Lapse of Reason, The Division Bell, and now The Endless River). When hearing the base tracks for The Endless River were recorded during The Division Bell sessions, I knew what to expect...more Gilmore era music. Regardless, this swan song offers a few pleasant surprises and highlights the one constant throughout all eras of The Floyd...Richard Wright's evocative keyboards.
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 Experimental death metal is nothing new, there always have been a bunch of brilliant bands to bring something new to the table. Recently bands like Diskord, Abyssal, or the better-known Portal have been marching forward with their banners of creativity held high, but Sweden's Morbus Chron manage to stand out even within the experimental/progressive death circle by including some good old thrash metal in their mix. |
 I don't know if a grind band can really be considered prog/art metal, but if there's one band worthy of such consideration it's Gridlink. Featuring vocalist Jon Chang of the greatly missed New Jersey avant-grindsters Discordance Axis and Japanese tech-grind guitarist extrordinare Takafumi Matsubara, Gridlink's third and final album Longhena was recently released by Handshake Inc. It's a technical/avant-garde grind masterpiece that I predict people still be talking about in 15 years. Yeah, it's that good and has the potential to be that influential. |
